Persons acquainted with the manufacture and operation of rotary brushes, and particularly those used in car washing operations, realize that the rotary brushes undergo rapid wear. Further, the bristles often become caught on various protruding portions of the vehicle, thereby causing breakage of the bristles. The bristles associated with the brush also often wear in a nonuniform manner due to the irregular profile of the vehicle. Replacement of the bristles is thus a necessary maintenance operation. To improve the efficiency of this maintenance operation, some brush constructions have mounted the bristles on elongated bristle carrying members or strips, with a plurality of these strips being mounted on a core or drum to result in formation of a cylindrical brush. Brush constructions of this general type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,393,418, issued to L.J. Mundo, and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,529,314, issued to Gaylord J. Clark.
Brush constructions utilizing removable bristle carrying members or strips, as disclosed in the above-mentioned patents, have greatly simplified maintenance and repair by permitting sections of the brush construction to be repaired in a manner which is more efficient than the techniques previously utilized. However, in these known structures, the bristle carrying members have been connected to spaced collars by means of threaded fasteners, such as bolts or screws. These threaded fasteners, and the manner in which they connect the bristle holding members to the respective collars, have necessarily required that the fastener either be threadably disconnected from the collar or totally removed from the bristle carrying member in order to permit removal of the members from the collars. The necessity of having to remove the threaded fasteners prior to removal of the bristle carrying member does itself introduce some disadvantages. For example, removal of the threaded member is consuming and, since many repair operations must be accomplished in a minimal time so as to minimize shut-down time of the operation, the use of removable threaded fasteners has proven unacceptable in some situations. The use of removable fasteners is also undesirable since the loose fasteners tend to become lost or misplaced after the brush construction has been disassembled. Still further, many of the known structures have utilized a threaded fastener consisting of a bolt having a nut threaded on the inner end thereof. This type of structure has proven undesirable in many situations since the nut, by being positioned interiorly of the brush construction, is often positioned so that access to same is extremely difficult.
Accordingly, a primary object of this invention is the provision of a relatively inexpensive, rotary brush construction which overcomes the above-mentioned disadvantages. Particularly, in the brush construction of the present invention, both the cost of initial manufacture and the cost of repairing a worn or damaged brush can be held to an absolute minimum by fabricating the brush from a plurality of mounting collars and a plurality of identical elongated bristle carrying members which can be easily mounted on and removed from the collars for replacement and/or repair.
A further object of the invention is the provision of a brush construction, as aforesaid, which can be mounted upon or removed from a supporting shaft without dismantling the shaft, and which is constructed so that replacement bristle carrying members, which occupy a relatively small amount of space, can be stocked for emergency repairs, and which can be applied to a damaged brush by a person capable of handling ordinary tools, such as a wrench.
Still a further object of the invention is the provision of a brush construction, as aforesaid, which utilizes fastening elements which are mounted on the bristle carrying members and coact with suitable slots formed in the collars, whereby the bristle carrying members can be mounted on or removed from the collars merely by tightening or loosening the fastening elements, respectively, so that the bristle carrying members can be mounted on or removed from the collars solely by displacing the bristle carrying members in the longitudinal direction thereof without requiring complete disconnection or removal of the fastening elements.
Other objects and purposes of the present invention will be apparent to persons familiar with brush constructions of this general type upon reading the following descriptive material and examining the accompanying drawings.